Summary
- Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated fourth film and another release have been postponed due to strikes, with a potential 2025 release expected.
- Peele is collaborating on a mysterious video game project called OD, which blurs the lines between gaming and cinema.
- Peele’s previous films, including Get Out and Us, have helped diversify the horror genre with their originality, social commentary, and box office success.
Jordan Peele has had a second movie stripped from release schedules, the second of his future projects to see their potential release dates slip. Like many films with 2024 releases, the SAG and WGA strikes had led to the postponement of Jordan Peele’s fourth directorial effort, which is still unnamed. As Variety originally reported, the filmmaker’s next upcoming project appeared on Universal Pictures’ official website with an exact release date of December 25, 2024, on Christmas Day. That release has now been pulled completely, with many expecting a Summer 2025 release for Peele’s film, similar to Nope‘s July release in 2022.
Now a second movie the director was working on through his MonkeyPaw Productions has followed the same way. While this is another movie that there was very little known about, it seems to be a worrying trend for Peele’s work. However, as per Deadline, neither project has been canceled by Universal Pictures, and the removal is said to be all related to delays caused by the stikes.
Peele is busy with other things, however, as Entertainment Weekly reports:
“Peele was recently announced as a collaborator on the mysterious upcoming video game project OD from Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding). The project, which features actors like Sophia Lillis and Hunter Schafer, will blur the lines between gaming and cinema. “It is a game, don’t get me wrong, but it’s at the same time a movie, but the same time a new form of media,” Kojima said at The Game Awards earlier this month. “I grew up watching movies, and I’m a game creator now. Jordan grew up playing games, and he’s a movie director now. So this collaboration will be really awesome.”
Universal Pictures, which helmed Peele’s first three films, Get Out, Us, and Nope, continues to help orchestrate the director’s slate of groundbreaking horror projects. In following with tradition of his other films, Peele and Universal are staying very tight-lipped on the premise, casting, working title, and even the genre of his newest project. Rather than tease fans with hints of any kind, Peele prefers to keep the mystery around his work entirely obscure, a rather clever and underused tactic in the horror genre. In fact, that’s about the only notion the audience can go on until then, that there is destined to be a horror element blended in somehow.
As the horror niche in cinema continues to experience a new era of popularity with noticeably more original content and subsequently one box office success after another, Peele can count himself among the unique storytellers that has truly helped bolster and diversify the genre. His breakout feature film Get Out (2017), which perfectly kept its jaw-dropping twist a secret until its premiere, led to universal acclaim and became a cult phenomenon. With an impeccable cast it intertwined classic, hair-raising horror elements that built tension seamlessly to a fever pitch, with an abundance of “look in the mirror” social commentary that will keep the film very relevant for years to come.
His follow-up films Us (2019) and Nope (2022) kept to his trademark aesthetic, while the latter incorporated a more Neo-Western blend that also landed well with audiences. Now with at least one more major feature set for Christmas next year, Peele undoubtedly has many more stories to tell that will continue to contribute to the horror genre.
